Lunch Bunch: Like heaven on a plate

Koffee Kub worth 2 1/2-hour drive to Hico

Lunch Bunch/Times Record News
The Scottster at the Koffee Kup in Hico is a half-pound burger beauty topped by bacon, cheese and fresh burger veggies and also includes jalapeños and ranch dressing.

Lunch Bunch/Times Record News
The Koffee Kup in Hico is known for its homemade pies, including the banana blueberry.

Lunch Bunch/Times Record News
Behold the Bleu Cheese Burger at the famed Koffee Kup in Hico, population 1,300 or so. It's a specialty burger that includes crumbles of bleu cheese along with the necessary fresh burger veggies. Our order came with the Koffee Kup's Famous Onion Rings.

Lunch Bunch/Times Record News
The Koffee Kup in Hico is 2 hours from here but is always a good excuse for a road trip for any dedicated foodie, since the eatery was named by Texas Monthly as one of the Top 40 Small-Town Diners in 2008. Pictured above, clockwise from bottom, are the Bleu Cheese Burger with onion rings, cheeseburger with steak fries and Scottster Burger with curly fries.

HICO — Oh, Great Gods of Diners! You have answered my prayers. You have given humanity the Koffee Kup Family Restaurant.

It is here where the food is large, the meringue incredibly tall, the pie dreamy and the onion rings bombastic.

If you've never been to the Koffee Kup, which Texas Monthly named one of the 40 Best Small-Town Cafes in 2008, it's your obligation as someone who partakes of food to get there — right now — though you'll need a few hours. The Koffee Kup is a 2½-hour drive from here and is the pride of Hico, population 1,300 or so.

Road trip!

The first time I stopped at the Koffee Kup, I was unaware of its prowess among gourmands and ordered, unknowingly, the pancakes.

"These better be some amazing pancakes for $6," I mumbled.

And, lo and behold, they were.

The pancakes were enormous — a good 10 inches in diameter — and I have never doubted the Koffee Kup since. It is one of those diners where Texas tall tales are made, though in this case, the tall tales (such as those embarrassingly large pancakes) are generally true.

On this trip to the Koffee Kup — my third — I decided to try one of the eatery's Signature Specialty Burgers, along with the famed onion rings. I went for the Bleu Cheese Burger, a half-pound ground beef patty topped by bleu cheese crumbles and the requisite lettuce, tomato, sliced onion and pickles.

Boy, this thing was huge.

It was served somewhat unassembled, with the monster of a burger patty and its buddy, the crumbled bleu cheese, on one side, with the other half of the bun and all the cool veggies on the other side.

What a mélange of flavors when the warm patty finally met those cool veggies — and not just any veggies, but a very green lettuce leaf, very purple onion rings and very red tomato slices.

One complaint is that the burger was so large it was too big to eat all assembled, so I had to disassemble it and went that way. The other complaint is that the meat itself (without any toppings) wasn't as juicy as it could have been. Maybe next time I'll downgrade from medium to medium-rare.

And the onion rings — oh the onion rings. They, too, are big and aggressively battered (the batter makes this particular onion ring variety a keeper). In fact, I couldn't taste the onion much, though I still enjoyed the heck out of those rings for the batter alone.

My Lunch Bunch Buddy opted for the Scottster, a half-pound patty with sliced jalapeños, bacon, lettuce, tomato, cheese and ranch dressing, along with curly fries on the side.

He said he was in burger heaven. He loved all the flavors together, though he said he could have taken it if they added even more jalapeños. His particular burger wasn't quite spicy enough for him. And the curly fries were long and skinny and definitely tasty.

Another Lunch Buddy wasn't very hungry so just ordered the corn dog and regular fries, and as usual, nothing is as expected at the Koffee Kup. The corn dog, which was just $2.50, was actually an extra long 'dog. She was happy with it, though we suspect she regrets not ordering her first pick, the jalapeño cream cheese burger, which Texas Monthly named as one of the 50 Best Burgers in 2009.

No trip to the Koffee Kup is complete without pie for dessert, the thing for which the diner is most known. My favorite is the black forest pie, filled with two layers of chocolate filling, along with whipped topping, pecans, a Hershey bar and cherries. But alas, they were all out of the black forest, which led me to the banana blueberry pie. It is made with sliced bananas in a cream cheese filling topped by blueberries.

Oh, my gosh. It too was fresh and pretty amazing (though I'm still partial to the black forest).

My goal is to make it through the parade of pies at the Koffee Kup on future trips, and I believe there are a dozen or more of them rotated daily. Caramel cream and Reeses pieces: You're next.

By the way, the Koffee Kup, a Hico landmark that has been in the Allen family since the 1970s, also serves chicken fried steak, rib-eyes, enchiladas and catfish, to name a few. And the Koffee Kup is quite the baking establishment. Not only does it make its own pies but its own bread, too.